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I have always had issues with writing, I never understood…

Good morning, I have always...

Good morning, I have always had issues with writing, I never understood how to use punctuations in a sentence. Can you please break down when is the proper time to use them. I do know quotation marks and periods.

Hello, my name is*****'m a professional freelance copywriter, journalist and editor. I can certainly help you with this request! Please allow me a few moments to compose my answer and I'll be right back. :)

I know most punctuation websites are overly technical and hard to understand, so let me try to break it down for you.

You've said you are familiar with periods and quotation marks. I'm guessing you are also familiar with question marks. So let's tackle some of the trickier ones, and I'll try to keep it simple.

------------------------------

Commas: Commas are used to separate items in a list, create a natural break or pause, or insert a related thought. For instance, commas are used like this to cordon off an intro clause. See what I did there? I see in your original question you used a comma correctly, so I'm going to assume this is also an easy one for you, although some uses may occasionally trip you up. Fortunately, if you are an avid reader of high-quality journalism and fiction, you'll soon pick up on their uses. I often think of them as like a "breath" in a song--they're a sort of logical thought-pause.

Exclamation Points (!) and Ellipses (...): My rule is simple--don't use them. These are two of the most overused and badly used marks. I will occasionally use them in casual emails, private messages and texting, but I almost never use them in professional writing.

Colon: Like this example, colons are used to announce the beginning of a list, whether it's a bullet-point list like this one, or within a sentence. Two or three items in a sentence can be separated by commas, but longer lists are usually announced with a colon.

Semi-colon (;): This one trips a lot of people up, but it's actually pretty easy to learn when you consider that it has just one main use, and one minor use. Its purposes are entirely different than the colon (:), so it always annoys me when books or websites pair it with the colon. It's main use is to separate two long but related clauses in one sentence. In that way, it is often used instead of 'and' or 'but' or even 'because'; it's a cleaner way to connect two long thoughts into one. It's often used in this way by more advanced writers. When in doubt, just separate the two clauses into separate sentences. How simple is that?

Its second purpose is useful when you have a long list of stuff, but each item has commas in it, so using commas to separate the items is just terribly confusing. In that case, you can go back and insert semi-colons between each item so the list makes sense.

Parentheses (): These are used to insert a private note to the reader about something in your sentence. Usually it's a note that would be awkward to turn into a followup sentence. Typically used for just a quick thought or important point about what you are saying. You don't find these much in fiction anymore--they are typically found more in instructional texts. Parentheses are like whispered comments in the middle of a conversation.

Long dash (--): I love the long dash, and am probably guilty of over-using it. It can be used like a semi-colon to separate two related thoughts that you want in the same sentence. It can also be used to insert a related clause right into the middle of a sentence. It's cleaner and more professional looking than parentheses.

The one thing I like to emphasize to students of punctuation is that the marks are there to serve YOU. You are not a slave to them. Play with the rules, experiment, find out how to use them to make your personal voice and writing style shine through.

Yes, exactly. Commas are very versatile, and can be used to create pauses like a breath. When in doubt, imagine you are on TV and reading from a teleprompter that shows you only a few words at a time. Where would you break the sentence naturally? Those are the spots that may or may not require a comma.

For instance, your question above is okay, but it would read better and make more sense to me if it looked like this:

"So basically, when writing a sentence using a breath, I can use a comma instead of a period?"

That's because you could have simply asked, "So basically, I can use a comma instead of a period?" But you wanted to be very specific, so you inserted a qualifier clause in the middle of the sentence.

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Customer reply replied 7 months ago

Thank you I was going to put a comma after the word breath. Now I'm thinking comma after you correct?

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Disclaimer: Information in questions, answers, and other posts on this site ("Posts") comes from individual users, not JustAnswer; JustAnswer is not responsible for Posts. Posts are for general information, are not intended to substitute for informed professional advice (medical, legal, veterinary, financial, etc.), or to establish a professional-client relationship. The site and services are provided "as is" with no warranty or representations by JustAnswer regarding the qualifications of Experts. To see what credentials have been verified by a third-party service, please click on the "Verified" symbol in some Experts' profiles. JustAnswer is not intended or designed for EMERGENCY questions which should be directed immediately by telephone or in-person to qualified professionals.